Welcome to my BLOG about our longstanding and unshakeable love affair with a car. Well, its not just any car, but a 1973 MGB Tourer. Its pictured here with a hardtop that I hauled around for 25 years before selling it to an MG colleague in Austin, Texas. As a resident of Houston, I found that the heat and humidity rendered the hardtop rarely used. Plus, I needed the space. When I bought the top we lived in Billings, Montana. There, it got some use as I drove the car year-round.

We bought this B in 1974 when it already had 20,000 miles on the odometer. The original owner bought it from the dealer in Columbus, Ohio the year before. He drove it hard for those months driving to and from Cleveland to see his girl-friend. He reluctantly sold it to us when his job provided a company car. He was a co-employee at my wife's employer in Columbus.

We were always able to garage the B in Ohio, later in Billings, Montana (1979), Ponca City, Oklahoma (1982), and in Houston, Texas since 1984. It has been kept all original and still has the factory finish and interior. With 115,000 miles now, the engine has never been apart. Reliability has rarely been an issue. I have been briefly stranded twice with fuel pump problems and once with carb misadjustment, once for a bad coil and once for a loose screw in the distributor. There have been none of the infamous Lucas electrical glitches unless you count the poor grounding in the boot that caused one of the fuel pump issues.

It has competed many years in the All British Motor Vehicle Exposition in Houston, sponsored by the Houston MG Car Club. When it finally won 1st Place in the Chrome Bumper Class in 2000, I relaxed a bit, but still like to keep it clean and running, of course.